Some of you might have noticed a new banner on the Google Home app in the Discover tab advertizing a deal on the SmartThings Hub. Luckily, that discount works regardless of whether you go through the banner or simply shop for the smart hub online, so you don't need a special link to save some dollars: it's half-off on several sites.

The Samsung SmartThings Hub v2 is a small square-shaped gadget that plugs into your router and acts as a middleman between your different smart gadgets. It connects to Z-Wave sensors and lights and locks, ZigBee lights, many WiFi devices, and it even has Bluetooth connectivity. The full list of compatible devices can be found here. Everyone who uses it praises how versatile it is at letting you set up scenes and automations so that things happen around the house without any manual intervention. There's an Android app to program everything and you can control things with voice if you have a Google Home or an Amazon Echo device.

The Hub v2's official MSRP is $99.99, but it often dips to $79.99. The $49.99 price only happened once before — last year around Black Friday — so it's a pretty rare discount and one you might want to think about if you're considering an extension to your smart home that might require different devices to work better together.

Comments

TheBest

This device doesn't have PoE but it should.

paulmike3

Google and SmartThings recently broke their integration, and both are pointing the finger at each other.

They tried to make it so all ST devices automatically sync into Google Home, but they managed to sever the connection, with the only resolution being to delete the link and set it back up. The problem is that most people can't re-link it after disconnect, and those that can - ALL SmartThings devices come into Google Home and are voice controllable. Gone are the days of selecting what you want to add to Google. Now if you say "turn everything off", things you previously intentionally didn't have in Google all get shut off.

It's a complete botch job, and neither is working to fix it.

Defenestratus

Yeha this happened to me - I added some new switches in my house during a reno and when I went to go add those switches in the Home app, the only option it allowed me to do is unlink the ST integration and re-enable it - which is very, very annoying.

Oh bugger... And I was considering ditching my Wink Hub 2 for this. Can you please keep us updated over on [email protected] when you know that things are working again? It's something I (and others) will probably love to know about.

paulmike3

I would still ditch Wink, especially for $50.

ST is miles ahead with the developer community support for pretty much everything Z-wave and Zigbee.

I'll keep you posted on the Google Home integration. A ST engineer has been posting on several ST/GH communities and soliciting feedback on the unintended change they implemented. I'm hopeful they'll listen and partially revert the forced sync.

PerhapsNever

I voiced my negativity about it over on the ST community.

paulmike3

Same... It's fixed! The SmartApp has options to exclude what you want. Need to unlink/relink to get the new SmartApp in ST.

Paulo

Same issue here. The problem I have is that I have a lot of unusual devices like Blink cameras and now I can't say turn off everything because Google has access to every device. Very frustrating luckily my Amazon devices still work properly and the grouping in Amazon is much better than the room system in Google.

John

I would like to buy this through AP's Amazon link, but the link loops back to Android Police.

Hubless would be great, and for a while I've gotten along just linking stuff to Wink and just using their app. Unfortunatley I've started branching into more hardware that requires hubs of their own, and neither Smart Things or Wink want to interface software only and want me to pair the items directly to their own hub. Alas.

Capt4chris

I'm enjoying our SmartThings hub just enough so far but we're really only scratching the surface. But even on basic automation, the system is pretty quirky but it mostly does the job. The industry has a long way to go though.

chetankania

Is this a US only deal?

Mike Sch

The Home Monitoring Kit is also 40% off at $150 instead of $250. Quite a steal for the hub, two multipurpose sensors, one motion sensor, and a smart plug.